Humiliation is a price too great to pay for many who, after spending a lifetime defending lies, begin to realize the Truth.
My father was a religious man for the better part of his life and to the best of my knowledge he was a good one… although I suspect there were some skeletons in his closet that we never got around to talking about. He was a good husband and father who provided well for his family. He was an Elder in the church and taught Catechism to Junior High boys, one of the least liked duties of an Elder. The only thing worse than Catechism for most Elders is the job of bringing the tapes, of the Sunday morning service, around to the shut-ins on Monday morning, a job he did with pleasure. There is really nothing I could say bad about him and I doubt there are many who could… yet at the age of 75 he walked out of the Bauer Christian Reformed Church and never looked back… although he did join a Church, a few miles down the road… it was, he said, only because he didn’t know what else to do on a Sunday morning and would have difficulty explaining to family and friends, should they see him packing his golf clubs into the car and heading out to play a few holes of golf and enjoying a cold beer at the club, instead of going to church.
Before he died he confided in me his contentment with his decision to leave the Church but also his frustration for not knowing how to tell his children that he had made a mistake by raising them in a religious environment. My experience in life tells me that he is not the only father to have felt that frustration, nor is he the only person to realize that he had made a mistake, but didn’t know how to admit it to family and friends who had been influenced by the mistakes they had made.
I left religion long before he did, but did not make it public until after his death… it was not easy for me either. Looking back, I wish I had done it much sooner, but we cannot change the past and I am happy for this chance to share my Unbelief with the world today. There really is nothing quite like Unbelief, for there is now nothing I need to prove and there is no need for me to be right. I can simply enjoy life as it unfolds in front of me. What others think or believe no longer has an effect on my Spiritual life, for I am happy just to be who I am.
Some may think that this writing is just another attack on religion… but it really is not. I know and respect many good people who are very religious… but to tell you the truth, I have yet to meet one who can convince me that they actually believe in the doctrine that their church teaches. Most have stopped attending church regularly and the few that are still faithful, do so only because it fulfills a social need, or, like my father, they don’t know what else to do on Sundays. Even church leaders, who have devoted their lives to the teaching of the Bible, find it difficult to present convincing evidence for the doctrine they teach and although they promise me they have it, they never get around to sharing it with me.
Admitting I was wrong was not easy in the beginning, but the Freedom I now enjoy is well worth the humiliation I went through to get here… and it is this Freedom that I now have, that motivates my writings and inspires me to share them with others… others who, like myself, are longing to be free of the bondage that religious leaders subjugate on their followers.
